Fascination (review)

Sun Feb 06 2005, 12:21am | comments off

Finally, an “erotic thriller” for people who like the ludicrous, threadbare plots and stilted, preposterous acting of bad porn but just don’t want to deal with all the boring explicit sex that goes along with it. Laughably cheap and cheesy, this ridiculous tale of infidelity, murder, and alleged sexual obsession is beset by coincidence, “sexy” moaning on the soundtrack, and dialogue that sounds like it was badly translated from another language… oh, and lots of boring fake-looking pseudo sex happening juuust off-camera enough to qualify for an R rating. Adam Garcia (Coyote Ugly), whose idea of “emoting” is to screw his face up like he just smelled something bad (maybe it was this movie), “stars” as Scott Doherty, a young man in hot and steamy south Florida *snort* who suspects that the death of his wealthy father was cooked up by his mother, played by Jacqueline Bisset (Dangerous Beauty), whom the film would like you to consider the star, but don’t be fooled. It’s all the awful Garcia and his new girlfriend (Alice Evans: 102 Dalmatians) — who just happens *snort* to be the daughter of his mother’s new boyfriend (Stuart Wilson: Vertical Limit) — rolling off the roof of city hall while having sex on the Spanish tiles or rolling an SUV off the road at high speed in an act of foreplay, all while you roll your eyes. But the high low point may be the double date that Scott and his lawyer friend (Craig Cady) — who had previously shared an intimate moment that made you go, “Wait, they’re a couple, right?” — take their “girlfriends” on, to the illegal nighttime exhumation of Scott’s father’s body. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but somebody did make this stuff up. Bisset escapes too much damage just by being so damn regal and elegant, but the rest of the cast has no such fallback position. They earn each and every snort of derisive laughter they get.